"A heartfelt exploration of human grief after the loss of a pet by the New York Times bestselling author of Dogs Never Lie About Love. Over 84 million Americans-almost 3/4 of the US population-own a pet, and our society is still learning how to recognize and dignify that relationship with proper mourning rituals. We have only recently allowed the conversation of how to grieve for our non-human family members to come front and center. Lost Companions fills a specific, important demand, a massive need in the market for an accessible, meaningful book on pet loss. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson takes a very personal, heartfelt approach to this difficult subject, allowing readers to explore their own responses and reactions, suggesting ways through and out of grief, as well as meaningful ways to memorialize our best friends. Lost Companions is full of moving, thought-provoking and poignant stories about dogs, cats, horses, birds, wombats and other animals that beautifully illustrate the strong bond humans form with them"--

Dogs fill our hearts with love and our minds with wonder, but their emotional lives have remained unexplored since Darwin 125 years ago. Now in Dogs Never Lie About Love, controversial psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson brilliantly navigates the rich inner landscape of "our best friends. "As he guides readers through the surprising depth of canine emotional complexity, Jeffrey Masson draws from myth and literature, from scientific studies, and from the stories and observations of dog trainers and dog lovers around the world. But the stars of the book are the author's own three dogs whose delightful and mysterious behavior provides the way to exploring a wide range of subjects--from emotions like gratitude, compassion, loneliness, and disappointment to speculating what dogs dream of and how their powerful sense of smell shapes their perception of reality. As he sweeps aside old prejudices on animal behavior, Masson reaches into a rich universe of dog feeling to its essential core, their "master emotion": love. Like the dogs he loves, Masson's writing will capture the reader with its playful, mysterious, and serious sides. Its surprising insights provide a new dimension of understanding for dog owners everywhere.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson has long been interested in the relationships between humans and animals, and he's always been aware that there was something very special in our bond with dogs. No other animals love us in quite the same way as dogs love us. And it is mutual. Is it possible that we developed our capacity for love, sympathy, empathy, and compassion because of our long association with dogs? Over the past 40,000 years a collective domestication has occurred that brings us to where we are today--humans have formed intense bonds with dogs, and the adoration is almost always reciprocal--a love affair unmatched in the animal world.--From publisher description.

Orcas (or killer whales) are one of the planet's supreme predators. Alongside humans, they have the most complex brains to be found in nature. But while one of these two species has killed 200 million members of its own kind in the twentieth century alone, the other has killed none. This is where Jeffrey Masson's fascinating new book begins: there is something different about humans. Masson has shown us that animals can teach us much about our own emotions - about love (dogs), contentment (cats) and grief (elephants). But they have much to teach us about the negative emotions such as anger and aggression as well, and in unexpected ways. In Beasts he demonstrates that the violence we perceive in the 'wild' is mostly a matter of projection. We link the basest human behaviour to animals, to 'beasts', and claim the high ground for our species. We are least 'human', we think, when we succumb to our primitive, animal instincts. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Animal predators kill to survive, but there is nothing in the annals of animal aggression remotely equivalent to the violence mankind has inflicted upon itself. Humans, and humans in our modern industrialised world in particular, are the most violent species in existence. We lack what all other animals have: a check on aggression that serves the species rather than destroys it. And it is here that animals have something vitally important to teach us about ourselves.